


the way we look in any light

by ryyves



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: I have no idea how compliant or noncompliant this is, I'm a few eps into season 2 and I'm just trying to process that transition, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Other, Sex, be careful if suicide is a trigger for you, suicide attempt (referenced)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:28:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26329390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: It could have gone differently. They could have touched the world.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	the way we look in any light

**Author's Note:**

> I was very careful when writing the third scene, which is the one that deals with suicide, and in the end I decided to keep it in the fic.

And Juno Steel can’t get enough of Peter Nureyev. He thought he knew that, there, the first time they kissed. He thought he knew that the first time Nureyev’s hand slipped under his shirt, the first time he hooked Nureyev’s leg over his shoulder.

He thought he knew, but the passenger ship is big and Nureyev is laughing down every hallway. That laugh sett;es in Juno where he’s sure it will dislodge his heart. Juno chalks Nureyev’s giddiness up to the thrill of cheating death, but he isn’t sure. This sort of travel isn’t new to Nureyev, but you wouldn’t know by looking at him. It is new to Juno, and he makes it obvious. Before he fell in love with his city, he’d look up at this big, dark sky and imagine the hundreds of planets and asteroids teeming with life.

But even as a kid, he was never fool enough to play make-believe. To climb aboard some imaginary spacecraft and jettison into the empty sky.

He grew up. And then it was easier to see the sky as empty compared to a city that needed him. It was easier to put down roots, to grow himself into the heart of Hyperion City, to make himself unforgettable to a world that would never have reason to forget him.

The city got bigger while he was asleep. It grew teeth. It held him between its canines, its maw big enough to swallow him like a pill, without water.

Here, thousands of miles from Mars, Nureyev catches Juno when Juno stumbles. It is taking him longer than he’d hoped to adjust to his new depth perception. The space where his eye was, sewn neatly shut, doesn’t hurt when he presses on it, and sometimes he presses a little too hard.

But a room on the passenger ship cost almost half of Juno’s creds, though Nureyev paid his share, so Juno is trying to make the most of it. To see every bolt in every wall, every star in every vast window. Mostly he’s just tired. Well, hell, he knew love couldn’t solve everything. Still, he wants to keep believing.

The room they share could have been a single, but the few belongings between them fit neatly under the bed. The room has a big window, circular like stories of ship that drifted across grand, sparkling oceans, and every time Juno enters or leaves the room, he looks out it. Stars crawl by outside, but their constellations remain largely the same. It helps to know where he stands, physically.

And every morning, after their showers, Juno gets to see Nureyev in his towel, combing out his hair, applying that cologne. It fills up the room and never goes away. They could clean this room for a hundred subsequent passengers, but it would always be Nureyev’s.

When they pass through the asteroid belt, Juno watches through every window — the bedroom, the outer hallways, the dining hall.

Juno has his fingers on the window when he decides to ask it. Nureyev is undressing for bed. The lights have dimmed themselves in preparation for evening, because there is no other way to tell time on the ship. It’s up to the passengers to turn them off.

“Hey, Nureyev.” He is careful to keep it casual. There is nowhere on this ship for either of them to run, and Juno knows that all good things eventually set themselves on fire, so he has to cover all his bases.

“Hm?”

Juno regrets that he cannot see Nureyev, but even if he were looking, he would only see in half light. “Why’d you—back when we first met. Why’d you tell me your real name?”

“Oh,” says Nureyev. “Well—”

“It wasn’t even a first date. You didn’t know why I did the things I did. Hell, I don’t even know that myself all the time.” What he doesn’t say: _I don’t know how to trust like that._ He has thirty-eight years of walls around his heart, gruff facades and suspicious thoughts. He is trying to hold the suspicion down, now, inside his stomach where it can’t come out of his mouth.

Nureyev says, “I knew you.”

“Yeah, I know. All my public records, my whole life in every Hyperion City database.” When it comes to his past, every story beat is practically written in bold across the city. Every failure, every tragedy, every trauma he won’t call a trauma.

“I did my research, yes.”

“But I knew that,” Juno insists. The air shifts behind Juno, and Nureyev’s chin rests on Juno’s shoulder. His arms reach around Juno, covering his hands where they peek out of his jacket. Juno sighs. He twists his hands until his fingers can intertwine with Nureyev’s, their palms pressed together. “You combed every public file and there wasn’t a lot left of Juno Steel’s entire life that wasn’t right there for you. But I’m not special. There’s nothing remarkable about me, anything more trustworthy than any other ex-cop or PI or wannabe do-gooder in Hyperion City.” He bites his lip. He has to stop now or the words will come out like blood. Some parts of him are still postmortem; every locked door inside him is a grave. “So I want to know why. Really why.”

“You’re doing it again,” says Nureyev.

Juno sighs again and squeezes Nureyev’s hand in his. “I know. Old habits. But I want to hear it out loud.”

Nureyev says, “Have you ever let me down?”

“You know I can’t answer that.”

“Sometimes you have to take a calculated risk. And risk’s the name of my game.”

Juno chuckles. “You’re smarter than that. You’d have been caught a dozen times over if you’d gone around telling people your name just because a database calls them a hero.”

“You know, it was actually because you weren’t a hero that I decided it was worth it. I worked with you, anyway.”

“The algorithm let you know, then.” Juno doesn’t want to let this go, not until he understands. “I’m sure there are a million other sorta semi quasi trustworthy guys in the known universe. Why me?”

Until Juno, no one alive knew Nureyev’s name. No one in the world could hold him down the truth of him. But something arced like electricity between their lips and Nureyev stripped off Rex Glass like a mask and didn’t have another one underneath.

“I could fall into you.” It’s so frank, so vulnerable. That practical voice, that sweet accent. The mechanism of a heart, Nureyev shirtless against Juno. “I knew it then, stronger than anything else. This isn’t a business endeavor, Juno. Sure, I told you because I knew, a guy with as many secrets as you, that you could keep a secret, but it was more than that.”

Juno drinks it in, the words, those hot lips against the back of his neck, the hands on his. “You gave me your real name ‘cause you liked me?”

“You could say that.”

Affectionately, Juno says, “You sap.”

“Juno.” Nureyev’s voice is serious and gentle. “I trusted you with my entire mind. I gave you everything of myself, and I’d give it again. When you play the game the way I do, what’s inside your head is the most important thing in the world, the only thing no one can take from you, the center of every secret you ever have to keep.”

“Oh,” says Juno.

“I gave it to you. I let you see everything.”

Juno closes his eyes.

Nureyev says, “And I reckon I made a good call.” He kisses Juno’s neck above his jacket collar, and it sends warm thrills through Juno. Juno closes his eyes, but the stars stay behind his eyelids. Nureyev kisses from his ear to his collarbone, so Juno tips his chin back. He keeps his eyes closed. He doesn’t want to say, _Time will tell,_ but he doesn’t trust himself to not set this aflame, either.

Instead, he catches Nureyev’s mouth in a hot kiss. Nureyev lets go with one hand and lets it settle on Juno’s waist. Juno’s whole body tingles.

Juno opens his eyes and watches Nureyev kissing him: heavy lashes, locks of dark hair hanging in his face, the little wrinkle of want between his brows as he kisses again and again. And when pulls back for a second, he opens his eyes, and they are the brightest eyes Juno has ever seen. Nureyev’s own sky filled with stars. A sky like that could swallow Juno forever. A sky like that could keep him warm always. Nureyev’s pupils meet Juno’s, and Juno grins.

Yeah, Juno thinks as he tucks his arm around Nureyev’s bare waist and pulls him flush against his body. He can live with that.

And Nureyev whispers, breathless, into Juno’s mouth, “Definitely a good call.”

* * *

The dining hall is open all hours of the day and night. It sits at the front of the ship, and has big windows that show everywhere they’re heading. Juno and Nureyev spend a lot of time there, looking at the stars. Nureyev has a map of the galaxy that he spreads across their table. They don’t draw any attention, because everyone here is trying to get somewhere, but Juno checks every time, just in case. Nureyev, who is familiar with the Milky Way, points out some of his favorite stops, places he’s longed to visit, the most magnificent sights he’s ever seen or heard of.

Juno keeps his knee against Nureyev’s. He needs something solid to hold onto, because otherwise he could fall into that starry night.

It is still hard to believe he’s here, on a spacecraft, uprooted and dizzy in space. If he fell out one of these big windows, he wouldn’t know how to get home. Regardless of death by asphyxiation, the pressure on his body, the disorientation before he realized he was dying, the directionless sky makes him uneasy.

So maybe it was easier to stay earthbound when ninety percent of deaths in space are of the boring kind. Not a black hole, for sure. Not a supernova, the rainbow gas of a stellar nursery. Just the slow and silent pull, bodies frozen in place.

When Juno Steel dies, he wants to die for something. He wants to mean something, just once, to someone.

And then he meets Nureyev’s eyes, and those eyes say he does mean something.

“Hey,” says Nureyev softly. “You get to pick, too, you know.”

And yes, Juno knows, but he bites his lip. Nureyev’s eyes dip to the motion.

“I don’t know,” Juno says. “I’m happy to let you take the helm for a bit.”

What he doesn’t say is the galaxy is big and he isn’t sure he belongs there. What he doesn’t say is he never let himself dream long enough to make a plan.

Nureyev says, “I’d feel bad if we only went places I want to go.”

But Juno says, “Nureyev.”

“Yes?”

“Show me the stars.”

So Nureyev picks extravagantly.

* * *

Sometimes, Peter Nureyev takes Juno to bed in the afternoon. There is little to distinguish afternoons from nights when every star is a sun in the dark. The lights up and down the corridors cast small shadows beneath them. The look that comes into Nureyev’s eyes sends thrills all through Juno, dark and piercing and clouded. He closes the door and walks Juno back to the bed, and because Juno trusts him, he doesn’t look behind him once. Nureyev kisses him hard, and Juno sighs against his mouth. He can feel Nureyev grin, teeth against his teeth. Even before the space closes between them, Juno is dizzy with Nureyev’s scent — not just his cologne, but the scent of him underneath, his shampoo and the bitter humanness of his skin.

“What do you want me to do to you now?” The way Nureyev says it, it’s almost dangerous, and Juno’s breath hitches.

“Anything. Do it fast, do it hard.” Juno is pinned to the bed, now, his jacket and t-shirt riding up around his ribs, his trousers unbuckled but still snug around his hips. It happens so quick, Nureyev’s hands deft and soft and sure. Nureyev sits on his waist, the curve of his ass brushing Juno’s thighs. Nureyev’s hair hangs over his brow, and he looks at Juno with such intensity.

“This is the way to live,” Juno confesses. “You, and a world I don’t have to fight for my place in. A future I can plan for beyond just getting to the next morning.” Nureyev bends to kiss him but stops an inch from Juno’s lips. Juno has to raise his chin to reach Nureyev, but his pinned arms don’t allow him to stretch higher.

“Don’t plan,” murmurs Nureyev. With the eye patch, Juno isn’t sure how far from him Nureyev is, but Nureyev has both his hands and it’s doing horrible things to Juno’s stomach. Juno keeps himself still, but it takes everything in him. He breathes heavily, a sharp heat running through his blood. “Just… just think about now.”

Juno laughs, but it’s shaky with all the loops his stomach is traveling in. It never gets old, being this close to Nureyev, being enveloped by his scent, his fingers.

“Now’s a pretty good future to deal with,” Juno shoots back. It doesn’t come out right, but he doesn’t have time to think about that, because just then Nureyev kisses him. Nureyev murmurs into the kiss, and it shoots through Juno like fire. He wants to make Nureyev make that sound for him for the rest of his life.

Nureyev says, “Don’t move.”

“No promises.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything else.” Laughing, Nureyev lifts his hands to pull off his shirt. As soon as he’s bare, Juno reaches out to touch his soft stomach. It rises and falls against Juno’s palm. “Now you.”

Juno doesn’t think about it. He says, “You do it.”

A new spark comes into Nureyev’s eyes. He slides down onto Juno’s thighs. Then he trails both palms up Juno’s stomach, up his chest, pushing up the shirt as he does so. Juno adjusts to let Nureyev slide his shirt over his wrists, his heavy jacket. Nureyev tosses the garments onto the floor.

Nureyev’s stomach presses against Juno’s when they kiss, breaths and bodies mingled.

“You’re beautiful,” says Nureyev.

“I’m horny, is what I am,” Juno tells him.

Nureyev settles in the dip between Juno’s stomach and legs and grinds there. Were he younger, Juno would have let out a groan at the friction through his unzipped trousers, but he’s been around this block a few too many times and he knows how to keep his composure. Still, he closes his eyes and lets the sensation wash through him. When he opens them, Nureyev is grinning. Nureyev rolls his body once again and then reaches up beyond the pillow, where Juno is still holding his arms. Juno likes it, this feeling of vulnerability, of being completely at the mercy of Nureyev’s desires.

He could almost forget.

“Juno,” says Nureyev, so low that Juno shivers. He wants to stay here, shivering, locked in the moment before whatever precipice he’s standing on gives way beneath them both. He wants to close his eyes and keep them that way. He wants to flip Nureyev kiss him so long and so low he forgets every concern.

Because Peter Nureyev isn’t looking at Juno’s face. He’s looking higher than that, where his hand is sliding up Juno’s arm, presumably to pin it again. The pressure of his thumb sliding up to Juno’s wrist, the pressure suddenly easing.

Oh. Oh, no.

Juno knows where he is looking.

Because the scar there runs straight and wide as a comet’s trail.

He’s begging Nureyev in his head to not say anything else, to skip that part of Juno’s body entirely, to kiss a long trail down Juno’s body and touch his nipples and work him till he really has to make a sound when Nureyev says, “What happened?”

Juno opens his mouth, but it’s so dry nothing comes out.

If there was any pity on Nureyev’s face, Juno would have pulled himself free in an instant — grabbed his jacket, left his shoes, closed the door behind him. But there isn’t. Strangely enough, there’s intent. Nureyev’s brow is furrowed, his bottom lip between his sharp teeth, but he doesn’t pity Juno for what he knows happened here.

The body is an abject landscape, inhospitable and grim. It’s not a place anyone would want to live in for long. It wakes up and gets tired and, worst of all, it doesn’t know when to give you a way out.

“The other one, too,” says Juno, and it comes out matter-of-fact.

Nureyev says, “I saw that,” but he doesn’t seem aware that he’s making a sound. He’s holding Juno’s wrist lightly, still looking. Juno wants to flip it around, to erase it from Nureyev’s memory, but that’s an act of admission.

Juno’s voice is gruff when he says, “You know what happened.”

“Juno,” says Nureyev again, in a voice that could break. “A lady’s allowed his secrets, of course.”

There’s more—Juno knows there is more—so Juno lets Nureyev speak. How many lovers saw its long shape in the dark, bright as a tattoo, and found it to be a deal breaker. How many lovers ran their tongues over it, like they alone could heal Juno Steel?

Meanwhile, Juno’s head screams _deal breaker._ Between that and Nureyev’s cologne, so thick Juno could drown in it, Juno can barely think. He doesn’t know what he wants, only that he doesn’t want this: Nureyev’s back in the doorway; Nureyev saying, _I’m sorry, I couldn’t live with you, knowing that;_ Nureyev with pity in his eyes every time he looked at Juno on this godforsaken ship until they could finally get off and go their separate ways.

It is easier in the dark; it is easier to keep his jacket on, always. Bodies are still bodies, whether or not he can see them when he puts his hands on their chests. Eyes and creases, fingers and hot, hot mouths.

“You’re crying,” says Nureyev, and Juno is looking for the pity but it comes out practical. It’s only later that Juno thinks to wonder how difficult it was for Nureyev to sound like that.

“I’m not.”

“I was there, Juno. I watched you die—I watched you _kill yourself_ in front of me.” His voice chokes up. “And now I know what that feels like forever. I didn’t think it was the first time, but this… well. This is one hell of a thing.”

His hand slips down from Juno’s wrist, and Juno flinches.

“I said don’t touch there!” Juno snatches his hand back, frantic. He pulls it close to his chest, where neither of them can see it.

Here it is: the whole story. Touch him and you’ll know. He who acts first controls the story.

Nureyev sits up, both of his hands close to his body. “You… didn’t, actually. Or. Oh. Was that what _forget it_ meant?”

And Juno wants him back, wants those hands on him and that intoxicating scent, wants to be touched until all he can think about is the fingers doing the touching, until all of this goes away. He wants to not think about the past he wears on his skin.

He doesn’t move his body, but he pulls his arm down. He holds his hands across his chest, palms in, where they don’t touch Nureyev. He says, miserably, “It’s a deal breaker. I get it.”

“What?”

“I gave an eye for you, and at the end of the day, I’m too much.”

“That’s not true,” says Nureyev. And then, unexpectedly, he laughs. He’s looking at Juno’s face, not his bare arms cleaved in two. It’s not a sweet laugh, but it isn’t bitter, either. “I see what you’re doing.”

“I’m not doing shit,” says Juno.

Nureyev climbs off Juno’s body. Juno just lays there on top of the covers. For a moment, he is cold in the absence of a warm body, but Nureyev doesn’t get off the bed. He sits beside Juno and looks at him with those bright, steady eyes. Juno wants to reach out, but doesn’t.

Nureyev says, “You’re not a deal breaker, Juno Steel. Nothing about you is a deal breaker. I knew you were suicidal when I told you I loved you, and I meant it. I still mean it. But I see what you’re doing. If you’re worried I’m going to break your heart, give me a chance to do it properly, knowing the real you. The whole of you. Give me the chance to decide on my own before you push me away.”

That catches Juno off guard. This is unknown territory, but his frantic heart is filling in the gaps. Anyone else, he thinks, would be saying, _I’ll never break your heart._ But sharp-witted Peter Nureyev is looking through Juno to the ugly place where his insecurities lie and isn’t making any promises he doesn’t know if he can keep. A rush of fondness courses through Juno at the realization.

“Can you do that?” says Nureyev.

It’s all he’s asking, and Juno wants to cry.

While Juno considers, Nureyev eases the blankets out from underneath Juno. As soon as they’re lifted, Juno crawls inside and curls up.

“Knock, knock,” says Nureyev softly.

“Yeah?”

Holding the blanket up, Nureyev says, “Can I come inside?”

It’s one of the sweetest things a lover has ever done for Juno: backed off when emotions got too high, asked consent to get close again, without leaving. Without ever leaving.

“Yeah,” says Juno.

Nureyev slides under the blanket beside Juno. They are still bare-chested, and the space under the blanket is hot. When Nureyev rests his cheek on the pillow beside Juno’s, Juno feels about ten years younger. Unsure and frantic, weighing his options.

“Thank you,” he tells Nureyev.

The space between them is lush with promise, but Juno thinks it would take a thousand years to cross it. Nureyev’s eyes are steady on him, and shadows fall over his bare chest. Juno is cold, suddenly. The blanket shifts with their breathing.

Juno says, because he has to say something, because he hast to say this, “Why would you trust me? I can’t even trust myself. Not with this, not with… my life.”

“Then trust it to someone else.”

“What?”

“Juno Steel, I am traveling to the furthest reaches of the galaxy with you. I am giving you my life. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again. I trust you with _me._ And you’ve proven over and over that I made the right choice. Let me take care of you. Let me be here for you. Okay?”

There are so many things Juno wants to say, muffled by his pillow or by the shame in his throat, so many ways to beg Nureyev not to trust him. But Juno accepted this trust, this love, long ago. Nureyev asked to come in, which means, no matter how insistent his fear, Juno is determined to not let this one go.

He takes a deep breath. It does nothing to alleviate the knot in his stomach. “I don’t want to lose you,” he admits, and somehow that says all of it.

Nureyev stretches his arm out across the pillow, and Juno folds himself into the embrace. Juno pulls the covers up over their waists. His legs fit between Nureyev’s, but for now the fire is gone. Pulling Juno closer, Nureyev presses kisses to his brow, his hair, his eye patch, the tip of his nose. Juno tips his head to catch Nureyev’s lips in a slow kiss. He doesn’t have anything to worry about, he tells himself. Nureyev isn’t leaving.

Juno has to play his cards right. He can’t chase Nureyev away.

“What do you want me to do with them, Juno?” Nureyev is warm, and he holds Juno securely.

Juno doesn’t want to speak; he wants to let the fear run its course through him and leave him empty of it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about .”

“Your scars.” And he doesn’t ask, not once, when it happened or why. He doesn’t ask, _Are you waiting, now, to try it again?_ He doesn’t issue an ultimatum.

These are the sorts of things Juno has to think about.

Juno sighs. “They’re just a part of me. They’re not special. Just… be normal about them.”

“Well, then,” says Nureyev. “You have nothing to worry about.”

Juno still worries, of course, but Nureyev doesn’t leave.

And when Nureyev kisses him, hard and full of fire, Juno kisses back.

* * *

This is how it could have gone: the black, black sky ripped apart by the cosmic bullets we call stars; a view he can’t get enough of from a hundred big windows; a hand in his, soft and sweaty. It’s the sweetest thing Juno has ever known. Sweet as milk, sweet as saliva on his tongue, sweet as a night’s sky cleared of Hyperion City’s pollution, its rusted buildings and old padlocks. Under a russet sky, the buildings look grey, but they dazzle him with their lights. This is home. Always has been, always will be. There’s no getting away from it, not, at least, if he wants to get away.

(Sure, there was Miasma; there were wires in his head, his eye flickering with pain, but Juno had pleaded with every god he didn’t believe in to be set free.)

(Sure, There was Peter Nureyev saying, _I’ll come back for you._ No one in the world, beyond Nureyev, has ever come back because they wanted to.)

(But Juno Steel isn’t built for things that last.)

Things could have been different, if Juno had stayed.

There is a man in Juno’s bed who wants to put his hand in Juno’s every day. A man who says he’s in love with utter conviction, who calls himself a fool with no hint of foolishness in his voice. A man who never says that Juno, with all his baggage, is too much. A man whose kiss sends arcs of electricity through Juno.

And there is a ship on which Juno drinks in the dazzling, disorienting light of Peter Nureyev. A spacecraft bigger than any building Juno’s ever entered, a city in its own right, with its own character. Juno could have learned that character, and that of a hundred planets besides. The world is so big, and Juno almost convinced himself he belonged there.

Juno Steel is in his office with the door locked and only the desk light on. Rita’s computers are off, but their humming fills up the office like a lover breathing, in and out, against his body. The city never goes dim, and the night sky is never absolute. Soon the sky will go blue in the corners while the sun rises, pale and blinding, and then fade into a rusty pink, and then he will have to face what he did.

He runs his fingers over the paraphernalia of his office, while Rita’s door swings open. It looks like a mouth, somehow, sharp teeth and a hungry, blackened tongue. But his things feel like home. Feel like belonging, at least. Every choice Juno makes, now, will be a mistake. A door closed behind him.

So what is he willing to give up?

Nureyev, mostly in sleep, reaching out in the dark of Juno’s apartment, slurring, _Juno._ Oh, how sweet that voice was. How it slid like syrup through Juno. Juno didn’t look back. He didn’t apologize, didn’t clean himself off. He shrugged on his jacket, ran a hand through his hair, and left.

Maybe it clings to him, because he can smell sex even here.

Or maybe he can just smell Nureyev.

He sits in his spinning chair and crosses his feet on the desk. His boots look to big in this light, sand-crusted and weathered. Mars is good enough to him. Rarely kind, but exciting. Beautiful, filled with beautiful people with ugly thoughts. Juno could spend his lifetime unraveling their minds and never bore of it. He’s not one for clean shoes and pressed shirts, not without a funeral to go to, and he’s not one for white walls and bright stars and nebulae shifting in front of his eyes, which is to say, he is not one for extravagant things. To let life happen to him, to watch it happen like he’s ever had the privilege to sit back and observe.

Besides, he’s made a life for himself cleaning up messes, so much that the messes come to him, and Peter Nureyev deserves better than that.

He calls home on the work comm.

It’s the middle of the night, and while it rings, Juno doesn’t think of what he’s going to say. He doesn’t need to tell Nureyev the truth; it’s easier to give a white lie and make a clean break. The dark office stretches away around him, its familiar shelves and knickknacks, the pale glass between his office and Rita’s, the rug and old consulting chairs, the secrets hidden in his desk drawers.

And he’s glad when he reaches his own voicemail. In the recording, he sounded so composed, so detached. He isn’t sure he can ever be that Juno again.

The message runs on to the beep, and then Juno is left with a chasm of his breath between him and Peter Nureyev.

“Hey,” says Juno, and it cleaves the silence like a clean dive. He is hoping it does, anyway; he doesn’t want to clean up the mess, doesn’t want to leave a mess to clean up. Nureyev could be listening, now — sitting up in Juno’s bed in the dark, his hair rumpled, listening to Juno’s voice fill up the apartment.

Or, rather, listening to static fill up the apartment. Juno breathes and can’t say another word. Static fills up his mouth. It’s dark everywhere, within and without. There’s a black hole inside him and he’s crying, not quite sobbing but his throat catching thickly.

By the time he remembers the voicemail is still running, it’s too late to save face. It’s too late to say, _I’m sorry,_ or, _Goodbye._ His voice is a ghost in his throat.

 _I want to leave,_ his voice is saying in his head. _With you._

Juno can’t give Nureyev a life of Juno Steel.

The night is so long, and the echo of promises it’s only taken him hours to break so cacophonous. He ends the call and sits in that empty office.

Rita will be in in the morning and the view of the city from his office window will be the same, and in the end, it doesn’t matter what world Juno wakes up in, because he will always break Nureyev’s heart. Because love isn’t for a person like Juno. No candy clouds, no sunsets from rooftops, no hands and no body in his bed that he can always come home to.

It’s safer this way. It’s… comfortable. And he has the city to look out for.

Whether or not he could leave, could really pull up his roots and set sail through the darkening sky, he’s doing Nureyev a favor. Nureyev is a good man, a great man, and Juno wants, more than anything, more than any desperate dream to leave this life for adventure, not to hurt him. And, yeah, Juno doesn’t want _hurting Nureyev_ on his conscience. He doesn’t want to add Peter Nureyev to the list of people Juno Steel has damaged, screwed over, fucked up.

He doesn’t have to tell Rita a word, except for some story about his eye. He’ll be fielding questions about it for months, if he doesn’t play his cards right. But Nureyev is just his, even as he lets him go. Which means Juno doesn’t have to own up to anything. Yes, it could have gone differently. They could have touched the world. He could have asked Nureyev _why?_ Why he trusted Juno. Why he loved him. Why he came back. For the rest of his life, Nureyev will remember Juno as the person who walked out.

Juno will just have to live with that regret.

To quiet his thoughts, he pours himself a glass of scotch, neat, from a bottle in the cabinet. He holds it lightly while he looks out the window at his filthy, glittering city. Nureyev will be gone by the afternoon. Juno knows this much. For a period of months, Juno held the terrifying responsibility of being the only person Peter Nureyev trusted. He wonders if he’s going to be remembered as the person who broke Nureyev’s heart the deepest. He hopes he is. He doesn’t want Nureyev to have to go through this ever again.

Juno calls Rita at five thirty-five, because he knows she rises at five thirty. He’s not ready for the crush of her voice, but he only hesitates for a minute. His black hole heart swirls in his chest, and he doesn’t know how long he has before he collapses into it. But he’s Juno Steel. He always comes out standing, sure as a cat lands on its feet. He’ll get through this, no matter how long he has to pretend. No matter how long he smells Nureyev in his apartment — the rest of his life, if he has to.

Rita answers the phone with a chipper, if groggy, “Hey, Boss.”

It’s not as bad as he feared. She is so familiar, after all.

She says, with exaggerated affect, “It’s good to hear from you. I’d been all worried you were dead out there in that horrible desert and I was never gonna hear from you again, and, Boss, I was so worried.”

Juno chuckles. He knows where he stands with her. That makes it easy. “Relax, Rita. I’m fine.” But it sounds hollow, so he tries again. “I’m fine. Just don’t freak out about the eye patch.”

He knows to hold the comm away from his ear when she screeches, “Eye patch?”

When she’s calmed down enough to say “Mister Steel,” he says, tiredly, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when you get into work.”

“With a story like that—”

“Just. I’m gonna go back to sleep, and if I’m still out, don’t wake me up.”

He finishes his drink and leaves the glass on top of some papers on his desk. The city shining on his face, he closes his eyes.

The last thing Juno remembers before he falls asleep is the scent of Peter Nureyev.

It smells like home.


End file.
